My New Friend, Constance

*This was originally written yesterday in a notebook*

Picture this:  Me, lounging on a hammock in the middle of nowhere with a cold beer (“cider”), and my book, wearing an unflattering bikini because it’s 77 and sunny, with my speaker next to me playing some Florence & The Machine. 

Sounds nice, right? Besides the winter/isolation body in a bathing suit. I don’t have to picture it because that, my quarantined friends, is my current situation. 

I’ve been doing my part and staying home for the last three weeks. Then a very summer-like day popped up on my radar and I had the idea to take a long bike ride. Ya know, be outside but still away from everyone. Ask Lori, us Chicagoans can’t be inside when we finally get a beautiful day after midwest winters. 

Karen, I fucking know already. I’m not part of the problem, I was going to ride somewhere that wasn’t populated. You don’t have to go that hard to find a cornfield around here. 

I digress. Ran my long bike ride (originally to potentially Canada to see how those guys are doing) (that was a Friends reference),  by a person on my “people you’re allowed to see” list. My current nice day bike-ride partner if you will. And he fucking one-upped me. Why bike, he says. Let’s just drive, my car has a sunroof he says. IT WILL BE FUN he says. 

Cracking myself up here. Might be the buzz... No clue what time it is either. Woke up before the sun with ALL of the birds. I’ve never had the urge to hurt an animal before this morning. I would’ve shot them out of the sky if I owned or knew how to work a gun. In the world where I own a gun, I also don’t get PTSD triggers from loud noises. Nice place. 

We are in the freaking middle of nowhere surrounded by trees and every bird on the planet is also vacationing here this week. They insist on all talking at once and it's seriously obnoxious.

Well, it turns out Canada isn’t accepting visitors currently. That and we used our brains to figure out that going north would cause the temperature to get colder. The who point of this was the 70-degree day, remember? 

Apologies for the lack of structure on this timeline. I’ve had a couple and while setting up a queue just now on Spotify, I caught the time. It's Noon.

I was feeling’ nature. A state park maybe. Some of them are still open. Nice open space to keep our distance from humans. We would need to plan an overnight because I have been day drinking inside for almost a month. I’d be damned to not get drunk outside while attempting to obtain a sunburn on the only day I’d have a chance to. 

State parks and camping were the OG idea. Indiana dunes are a short hour drive from the city and the camping ground was open. I run this idea by #2.

Some insight on 2. He’s a SoCal boy. Matches me in both sarcasm and levels of smartass. Also, he is a code-writing nerd who is still very much employed and collecting his income. He responds to my “I’ve got a tent, lets MF goooo” text with the suggestion of finding an AIRBNB instead. Honey, if you wanna fund that, I am game. #2, this escape is now in your hands. Please excuse me if I refer to you as sugar daddy from this point forward. 

This fuckin guy finds a little cabin in the middle of the woods, literally surrounded by nothing and nobody. If you’re serious about social distancing, this is the way (Mando voice required).

3.5 hours away. Pictures feature a deck, grill, fire pit, hammock, little bridge over the creek, hiking path, full kitchen, and Constance is a Superhost. What a seriously nice lady. I would have to somehow cope with three hours of finance podcasts and gangster rap in the car because he doesn’t know another genre, but I’m not ungrateful. I could take a Xanax and sleep the whole ride as long as some of my body parts are under the sunroof catching rays. 

We took a little detour to a golf course on our way down. You heard me say he was from SoCal right? Couldn’t miss an opportunity to play a quick 9. I was only along for moral support as a caddy who didn’t actually carry anything. Great time to get a little base color in and rock a polo. I still know basically nothing about golf but I might be able to guide your grandma to the correct tee box?

The thing about where we are at is that yesterday was 75 and sunny but today it’s even warmer. And sunny. Taking this party a little south bought us an extra day of sunshine. That’s two days of sun people. TWO DAYS. So that is how I ended up here. In this hammock. With a buzz and a few new freckles. Spent last night sitting out on the deck under a full moon drinking Jim Honey (fuck off, it’s good) and not even thinking about viruses. Nothing beats a warm summer ish night sitting outside with a drink and good company. No coronavirus here, although something that would wipe out a few of these birds would be nice. 

**After writing that portion there was more fun. Stay with me. 

Once my skin was perfectly crisp it went back to dinner and more patio drinks. We were soon forced inside by one of those crazy storms that are twice as bad out in the sticks. Holy wind batman. The little cabin lost power. Say what you will about overpacking, but I happened to bring a battery-operated reading lamp so we didn’t have to end our game of go-fish or work with the one candle we could find. I did, however, have to listen to SD explain the step by step instructions on how to play go-fish.

Here is an insider tip on power outages. Turn the light switches off so when the power comes back on eventually, you aren’t blinded after a few hours spent in almost pitch darkness. Do not wait for them to come back on, stand up and say, AND I QUOTE, “Can we turn these lights off it’s too bright now” because the power will then immediately go back out. Didn’t come back on until after we were asleep.

Made it back early this morning because if I'm not here to nag these boys, nobody will. I was so relaxed out there I almost died from lack of a heartbeat. The best staycation away from the city I could’ve asked for. Could not be more grateful to have gone and upset to be back inside but you know the one thing the city doesn’t have at 4 am? Thousands of birds.